In electrical or electronic systems, various individual system modules, for instance various electronic/electric assemblies, various electronic/electric components, for instance various semi-conductor components such as integrated circuits, etc., various sub-components, provided in one and the same component or integrated circuit etc., communicate via a transfer medium such as a bus system.
A bus system may comprise one or more transfer lines. Bus systems can be used jointly by several, in particular by two or more than two modules/components/elements of a respective system.
Many conventional bus systems comprise several partial systems, for example, a data bus consisting of one or more data lines, and/or an address bus consisting of one or more address lines, and/or a control bus consisting of one or more control lines, etc.
In comparison to this, other bus systems are of a much simpler construction. For example, a so-called IBCB bus (IBCB=Inter Block Communication Bus) in general merely comprises two transmission lines to connect two respective modules/components/elements.
Further examples for relatively simple bus systems are CAN busses (CAN=Controller Area Network), which generally only comprise two or three lines (e.g., CAN_HIGH, CAN_LOW, and optionally, CAN_GND (ground)), LIN busses (LIN=Local Interconnect Network), which generally comprise only one single transmission line, etc.
In conventional systems, in many cases, various modules/components/elements are connected in a chain-like structure over various busses. For instance, a first component is connected via a first bus to a second component, the second component is connected via a second bus to a third component, the third component is connected via a third bus to a fourth component, etc. Hence, e.g., a logical “1” (or correspondingly, a logical “0”) may first be transmitted from the first component via the first bus to the second component, then from the second component via the second bus to the third component, then from the third component via the third bus to the fourth component, etc.
However, there are components where the delay caused by a respective component in such a chain structure may differ depending on whether, e.g., a logical “1”, or a logical “0” is transmitted, and/or whether there is, e.g., a positive, or a negative level shift, etc. Such delay differences, e.g., may vary depending on the temperature, the supply voltage, inherent differences between individual components, etc., and hence are not predictable.
If a relatively high number of components are connected in a chain structure, such delay differences may sum up such that the maximum total possible delay difference gets close to the length of an individual symbol (e.g., the length of a transmitted logical “1”, and/or the length of a transmitted logical “0”). This limits the minimum possible length of a symbol, and hence, the maximum possible data rate.
For these or other reasons there is a need for improved systems comprising a bus, and improved methods to transmit data over a bus system.